learning by travelling: Letter to the Mzansi People

Dear fellow South Africans,

We all know that South Africa has many challenges; from crime and corruption to electricity power outages and bickering politicians. Does that seem familiar wherever you live? Maybe these are all just humans behaving badly wherever they are…

You may be tired of listening to those same old stories. However, allow me to tell you the stories I have experienced living here.

White Jacaranda blooms are trying hard to stand out from the electric fence in Herbert Baker Street in Groenkloof, Pretoria

I have lost count of how many times we are almost driven over by reckless drivers while on our bikes. People do not stop at the stopstreets and the traffic lights as they are supposed to. People cut us off at the corner. People are on their phones while driving. My husband, Colin, goes berserk when he sees people turning the steering wheel with one hand and holding their phone with the other hand at the traffic light. When he questions why people risk their life like that, they point a dirty finger at him or their face turns red with the eyes of a hungry wolf. People in Vietnam even use their phones when they ride their scooters or motorbikes, let alone people here sitting comfortably in a 'matchbox with four wheels’. The abnormal becomes normal. It is so threatening to think about it.

Once we were waiting for our turn at the robot¹, we saw a white man waiting in his bakkie on the other side of the robot tossing his cool drink tin out of his window. My husband spoke loud enough to get his attention, asked him why he did that. He shrugged his shoulders, swung his arms in the air, and said, 'This is South Africa'. I couldn't believe what I heard. He chose to be part of the problem rather than be part of the solution. This is why South Africa is what she is now. The roadsides are scattered with rubbish like beer bottles and plastic bags. Even the rivers are filled with solid and other garbage. There’s a team of people with a lady in charge who keep cleaning the Hennops river, begging for money, but rubbish keeps coming back. The problem is too big and starts all along the river.

I see people of all races in South Africa littering and dumping when I cycle. Vietnamese people also do so. This is a shocking similarity I notice between Vietnam and South Africa. But no one dares to litter in Singapore. You know why! The law is strict and enforced, and people are respectful. They want their place to be clean and neat. In the end, whatever colour our skin is – black, brown, yellow or white, we behave more or less the same in some way.

On our cycling route to Pretoria West one day, we were stopped by police patrol officers. They warned us not to go further that way because the tsotsis² were still there hiding in the bush and waiting for cyclists like us. We were thankful for their warning and care and took another route which was safer. I must say we have been very lucky not to be stabbed or held at gun-point and robbed of our bikes and mobile phones up till now, so I do not have a chance to showcase my Vovinam (a Vietnamese martial art style with high-kicking techniques) yet. Once I kick, I kick so hard their mama in the grave will hear them screaming.

Vovinam, a Vietnamese martial art style with high-kicking techniques
Photo credit to AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam

On my rides to every nook and cranny of South Africa, I see private homes and residential areas isolated by big and tall walls with layers of razor fencing, surveillance cameras and guard booths. However, the incidents of break-ins are still as numerous as the piles of rubbish I see on the roads every day. Imagine how much money is spent to secure ourselves, I can only cry. With that money, people can invest in their children’s education or even pamper themselves with exotic holiday tours to Vietnam or Thailand — things they enjoy rather than forget.

That said, I still witness beautifully inspiring stories which keep me going.

My 87-year-old neighbour, Mrs Ollie, is an example. She has been so gracious to me. She loves having me over for tea, for which she will dress smartly, do her hair, and paint her nails. Whenever I visit her for tea, we chat about her flowers, her youth, she wonders what the future of South Africa will be. She won’t be here to see the changes – the so-called positive changes she so hopes for. She never complains but does the best she can. She lives on a pension, so she implements a very strict frugal life. She does the household chores herself, room by room because the house is large. When her two big JoJo water tanks that catch rainwater run dry, she watches her plants and flowers wither and desperately waits for the rain. She manages not to spend money as much as she can. Her money is meagre, but her Ubuntu³ spirit knows no bound. She makes sandwiches with peanut butter for the ‘trolley boy’⁴ every Wednesday. She told me that there are so many people who are in need, but she is able to help one person. She dresses smartly whenever she goes out for groceries, no matter if the clothes were bought many years ago. At the age of 87, her mind is still sharp thanks to her avid reading, listening to the radio and tending her garden. What intrigues me is that she still wears high heels whenever she goes out in her little white car. She loves high heels which must have a pointed nose. ‘I’m confident and feel good when I wear high heels’, she winks at me. She is a heroine for me, and my model for aging yet still looking good. Charlize Theron who now may forget how Mieliepap tastes, is not mine, for sure.

The trolley is more than half full after the trolley boy spends an hour from bin to bin digging and looking for recyclable items, in my neighbourhood.

On one occasion, on one of our normal cycling routes, close to where one of the interminable sinkholes appeared, where a row of lampposts was knocked down for copper wire, and a grove of big old gum trees⁵ was chopped down, we saw an elderly man picking up garbage along the roadside and on the grass verge. We stopped to chat, as we often do when we see people along our path. Colin said that it was unusual to see people picking up garbage rather than tossing it down. He said his friends and he had planted these saplings along the road — pointing to a row of young wild olive trees — and they were trying to beautify the area. He said that people litter less if an area is clean and neat, while once there is some litter it seems to encourage people to litter. He is right, of course. It is similar to the ‘New York broken window campaign’. Before we left him, he pointed out the row of young wild olive trees, saying they replace the high-water-use gum trees. He said he does what he can to keep his community clean and green. It is unhelpful to sit and moan and groan about a broken South Africa, he stated, if we do nothing.

Mrs Ollie and me on her 87th birthday

I still have a lot of stories – good, bad and even ugly – to tell you. But I should stop here with a sweet note.

For those who leave South Africa for what they imagine is a better life, they leave with sorrow, chanting, ‘I cry for you, my beloved South Africa!’. I wish you luck and peace wherever you find yourself.

For those who choose to stay, let us stay to make South Africa a better place. Stay for a purpose bigger than yourself. We can each make a positive difference by doing the right things and getting things done properly. The future of South Africa is in our hands — in our behaviours.

We must keep pushing and make a change for our beautiful South Africa. To do so, we need a recipe, and I suggest that the Alpha Programme is such a way!

So, I would like to invite you to receive the Alpha Weekly Note.

A screenshot of Alpha Weekly Note Subscription on the Karoo website

You can subscribe here.

There is never a better time than now!

Mai, the Vietnamese girl who calls South Africa home

Notes for those who are non-South-African:

Mzansi: an informal name for South Africa

1. Tsotsi is a South African English word for a young black gangster (pronounced as /ˈtsɔtsi/).

2. Robot means traffic light in South Africa

3. Ubuntu is an African word which means humanity to others. It is translated as ‘I am what I am because of who we all are'.

4. Trolley boy is an informal word for a waste picker. To my modest observations, waste pickers in South Africa are from other African countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi. They are all male and young. I have seen very few female waste pickers. If I see them, they always have a child with them. Unlike South Africa, waste pickers in Vietnam are the disabled and elderly who are refused to be employed and are too old to work, respectively.

5. Gum tree is known as eucalyptus tree in South Africa and Australia. Gum trees were imported to South Africa from Australia around 1870.

Letter to the Mzansi People

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